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Establishment of the Public School System in Virginia

The first statewide system of
free public schools in Virginia was established in 1870 after the ratification of a
new constitution and
was one of the most important and enduring accomplishments of Reconstruction. Prior
to the American Civil War
(1861–1865), education had been reserved mostly for elite white families; no southern
states had public school systems and in Virginia the education of free and enslaved African
Americans had been discouraged and, in some forms, made illegal. After the
abolition of slavery, the
federal Freedmen's Bureau
established the first statewide
system of schools, but only for African Americans; other, biracial systems
were set up, but only in Petersburg, Richmond, and
Norfolk. The new constitution
created a new statewide system that, in spite of protests by African American members of the
General Assembly,
segregated black and white students. The first state superintendent, William Henry Ruffner, set about
building the system's infrastructure—creating more than 2,800 schools and hiring
about 3,000 teachers by August 1871—and building political support for its funding.
In debates over how to pay off Virginia's large antebellum debt some politicians advocated
reducing funding for public schools, although the system became more stable when the
biracial Readjuster Party
took over government in 1881, appointed R. R. Farr superintendent, and increased
appropriations. By the turn of the century, public schools had attained broad social
and political support. MORE...

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Background

Before the Civil War none of the states south
of the Potomac and Ohio
rivers had public school systems. In the 1780s and 1810s the former governor Thomas Jefferson recommended
creating a statewide school system, and the governors David Campbell and James McDowell made similar recommendations in
the 1830s and 1840s. But the Constitutional Convention of
1829–1830 refused even to debate a proposal that the state take
responsibility to educate its children. White Virginians who could afford it hired
tutors or sent their children to private schools. By the middle of the nineteenth
century numerous academies for both boys and girls operated throughout Virginia,
and some Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopal churches sponsored schools. The
General Assembly did little more than authorize counties to establish schools for
educating paupers. That system, some Virginians complained to the assembly in the
mid-1850s, "has been a failure. It has failed to enlist public confidence, because
it has failed to confer public benefits … The poor parent, too often ignorant of
the blessings of learning, erects a barrier of pride against the progress of his
child. He refuses as a gift, what he would gladly use as a right." Among
Virginia's local governments, Norfolk County created a public school system in
1845, and the neighboring city of Norfolk created its own system in 1850.

The state actively discouraged the education
of enslaved Virginians. The General Assembly never made teaching individual free
or enslaved African Americans illegal, but it outlawed schools for them. In 1831
the assembly made it a criminal offense for any person to receive a salary for
teaching enslaved people, and it prohibited assembling classes of free African
Americans for the purpose of teaching them. Soon after the Civil War began four
African American women established two schools in Alexandria and another founded a school in Hampton. In 1862 a formerly enslaved
man from Petersburg opened Virginia's first high school for African Americans,
Beulah Normal and Theological School, in Alexandria. With the support of other
black Virginians, Northern service agencies such as the New England Freedmen's Aid
Society, the Pennsylvania Freemen's Relief Association, and various religious
charitable organizations founded schools for freed people in Virginia and sent
white and black teachers to the state.

In March 1865 Congress established the Bureau
of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly referred to as the Freedmen's
Bureau, in the Department of War. Its agents created schools for freed people, the
first statewide school system in Virginia. A majority of the teachers were African
American, but some were white, and some who moved to Virginia to teach remained in
the state after the Freedmen's Bureau ceased operating schools in 1869. The bureau
spent more than $200,000 on Virginia schools, which enrolled nearly 33,000
students. Petersburg created a racially segregated public school system in 1868,
and Richmond in 1869, but in 1870 those and the Norfolk schools were still the
only public schools in the state.

New Constitution

In 1867 Congress required Virginia and most of the other former Confederate states
to hold conventions to write new state constitutions. The constitutional
convention met in Virginia from December 3, 1867, to April 17, 1868, and the new
constitution, ratified in July 1869, included an article for the state's first
system of public schools. Two dozen African Americans, some of them formerly
enslaved, served in the convention, as did several white Virginia Unionists who had embraced radical reform
and other men who settled in Virginia during and after the war. The majority
favored significant reforms to Virginia's political and social systems and placed
the establishment of a system of public schools high on their agenda. They granted
adult African American men the right to vote and believed that voters should be
educated.

The new constitution required the General
Assembly at its first session after ratification to elect a superintendent of
public instruction and to establish "a uniform system of public free schools, and
for its gradual, equal, and full introduction into all the counties of the state"
by 1876. The constitution provided for a state board of education consisting of
the governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction and for
the popular election of three school trustees in each township in each county. The
constitution authorized the assembly to tax property to pay for the schools,
devoted proceeds from the state's old literary fund to the schools, and permitted
counties to lay additional taxes to supplement state appropriations.

Convention delegate Thomas
Bayne, who had escaped from slavery in the 1850s but returned to Norfolk before the end
of the Civil War, introduced an amendment to the education clause requiring the
schools to be "free to all classes, and no child, pupil or scholar shall be
ejected from said schools on account of race, color, or any invidious
distinction." The amendment to prohibit racial segregation failed by a vote of 56
to 15. Rejection of the amendment legally left the question of segregation
unsettled, but in practical terms it meant that unless the General Assembly
decided otherwise the schools were certain to be segregated.

First Year

On March 2, 1870, the General Assembly elected
William Henry Ruffner superintendent of public instruction and directed him, as
the constitution required, to submit within thirty days a plan to create the
public school system. The report he signed on March 28 closely followed the
prescriptions in the new state constitution and provided initially for "a system
of elementary education for children and youth, and of normal schools for the
training of teachers." With assistance from the University of Virginia law professor John B. Minor, Ruffner drafted a
bill to create the state board of education, empower it to appoint all county
school superintendents in the state, and set qualifications, duties, and salaries
for superintendents, teachers, and school trustees. The bill enabled counties to
levy taxes to provide additional revenue to support the county's schools.
Ruffner's bill also required racial segregation of the schools. The assembly
revised and passed the bill, and Governor Gilbert C. Walker signed it on July 11,
1870.

African Americans in the General Assembly supported the bill, but shortly before
it passed J. B. Miller Jr., an
African American member of the House of Delegates, made a motion to delete the
requirement for racial segregation. The motion failed, and then most of the
African Americans voted against passage of the bill as their only means of
objecting to what they believed was a denial of rights of equal citizenship they
had gained with the abolition of slavery and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution.

The Census of 1870, completed a few days
before the assembly passed the school law, disclosed how poorly educated most
Virginians were at that time. About 44 percent of all people in the state older
than ten could not read. One of four white Virginians older than ten and nine of
ten African American Virginians older than ten could not write. The state then had
2,024 schools (including the public schools in Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk)
and only about seven offering education above the elementary level. Fewer than
60,000 white people and only about 11,000 black people had attended any school in
Virginia the previous year, when the Freedmen's Bureau schools closed.

During the summer of 1870, Ruffner and the board of education appointed county
school superintendents and 1,400 district school trustees pending the elections
the constitution required. The first few schools opened in November. Voters in
seventy-three counties agreed to tax themselves to provide more money for the
schools, but in twenty-five other counties proposals to provide more money failed
to pass. By the end of August 1871 Ruffner and the superintendents had created
more than 2,800 public schools, of which more than 700 were for African Americans,
and hired more than 1,600 white male teachers, more than 900 white female
teachers, more than 300 black male teachers, and more than 150 black female
teachers. The schools enrolled about 90,000 white children and 40,000 black
children for an average instructional term of four and a half months. The state
spent about $450,000 on the schools, but additional county appropriations and
money from such foundations as the Peabody Education Fund allowed for a total
expenditure for the public schools the first year of $587,472.39.

Some white Virginians opposed public education as an unnecessary innovation, as
too expensive, because they disliked paying for the education of freed people, or
because they believed it unfair for the state to tax prosperous people to pay for
the education of poor children. The new system was, indeed, expensive, and the
constitution and laws imposed new taxes on incomes and owners of land to support
the system, which raised tax rates by about 20 percent. At the end of the first
full year of operations in 1871, Ruffner complained that the schools had received
about $175,000 less than anticipated and required.

Building Support

Ruffner tirelessly and forcefully promoted the
public school system, earning himself the nickname "the Horace Mann of Virginia,"
after the founder of public education in New England. From the beginning many
political leaders opposed public education, especially for African Americans.
Ruffner tried to persuade them that it was not unfair to tax prosperous people to
pay for the education of poor people because education was good for the society as
a whole. He also had to combat objections that Virginia's tradition of separation of
church and state would require public schools to omit religious and moral
instruction. He concentrated on the economic and moral benefits of education.
Nothing, Ruffner asserted, "brings back a larger or surer return of prosperity,
than the money expended in the education of the people; and this it does by drying
up the great source of crime and pauperism, and by quickening the mind, and thus
quickening and guiding the hand of every worker in the land … Nothing is so costly
as crime, and ignorant, thriftless labor … Universal suffrage simply necessitates
universal education."

By 1877, the year after the constitution
required that schools be established in every county, Virginia had 3,442 public
schools enrolling nearly 140,000 white students and 1,230 schools enrolling about
65,000 black students. Total expenditures on the schools that year (as for the
three preceding years) exceeded $1,000,000. Ruffner had complained from the very
beginning that teachers' and superintendents' salaries were too low to attract and
keep the highest quality educators, and he advocated increased funding for public
education throughout his tenure, but the state diverted money from education and
other programs to pay interest on the public debt. Throughout the 1870s the school
system should have received from $300,000 to $450,000 more each year than it did.
As early as 1874 Ruffner complained in his annual Virginia
School Report: The temptation, at such a crisis as this, is to make the
present amount of revenue go farther, nominally, by curtailing the
superintendence, or else by shortening the school term, or both: in other
words, to depreciate the value of the schools in order
to get more of them. This would be a practical fraud,
which could not be connived at by honest minds, if the injurious consequences
are understood. There always have been good men who advocated this sort of
economy, but they did so only because they had not studied out its destructive
effects. A little poor schooling is simply a waste of time and money. Every
intelligent man knows that five months is too short, not too long, a school
term for the year; and that we need more and better, not less and worse,
supervision for our schools.

The General Assembly nevertheless drastically slashed the school budget from more
than $1,000,000 in 1877 to $570,000 in 1879. About half the schools in the state
closed, their teachers lost their jobs, and half the students in the state
received no education. By then both the state's political parties had divided into
two factions. Funders insisted
on paying full interest on the public debt regardless of the consequences to the
schools, and Readjusters insisted on reducing both the rate of interest and the
amount of the principal to be paid in order to restore money to the education
budget. Readjusters framed the political choice facing voters this way: should
their tax money be spent to support the schools and for the benefit of the
children, or should it be paid to out-of-state and foreign speculators?

In 1878 the assembly passed a bill to require
that school taxes be collected in money (not in tax-receivable coupons clipped from
state bonds issued to pay the debt) that could be devoted exclusively to the
public schools. One member of the Senate of Virginia, John Warwick Daniel, denounced the bill as a
clandestine means of cheating the state's creditors. "He said," according to a
newspaper report, "he would rather see a bonfire made of every free school in the
State, and a bonfire then made of his own home" than see the bill enacted and
reduce revenue available for paying the creditors. After the bill passed, Governor
Frederick W. M.
Holliday vetoed it and denounced the public school system. "Public free
schools are not a necessity," he proclaimed. "The world, for hundreds of years,
grew in wealth, culture, and refinement, without them. They are a luxury, adding
when skilfully conducted, it may be, to the beauty and power of a state, but to be
paid for, like any other luxury, by the people who wish their benefits."

African American voters overwhelmingly favored
the Readjusters and the schools, and many thousands of lower- and middle-class
white voters did, too. In the 1879 legislative elections Readjusters won
majorities in both houses of the General Assembly, and in 1881 they also elected
the governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. In January 1882 the
Readjuster majority in the General Assembly appointed R. R. Farr superintendent of
public instruction in place of Ruffner. During the next two years Farr and the
Board of Education replaced almost every county school superintendent in the state
with men firmly committed to public education for both black and white children.
Even before the General Assembly adopted a new debt payment law in 1882 that freed
up money for the schools, Readjuster legislators increased appropriations to the
schools, allowing most of the schools that had closed to reopen.

During Farr's four years as superintendent of
public instruction, the General Assembly's reform of the state's finances enabled
it to increase appropriations for public schools. The state expanded and improved
the school system, acquired and constructed school buildings at an increased pace,
hired more teachers, and improved their pay. Enrollment grew from about
162,000 white students and 77,000 black students in 1881 to 197,000 whites and
111,000 blacks in 1886.

At the Turn of the Century

The public school system had gained a firm
foundation of political support in the 1880s. Determined voters of both races
repeatedly defeated political candidates who were willing to starve the school
fund (or burn the schools) in favor of paying the state's creditors. Political
leaders did not always appropriate enough money to erect enough good school houses
or pay teachers what they may have deserved, but thereafter none of them was
openly hostile to the system. Important though the school system was, it failed in
part through inadequate funding to provide education to all eligible Virginians.
The 1900 federal census reported that 33.1 percent of white children ages five to
nine and 68.5 percent of white children ages ten to fourteen had attended school
the previous year. Because few white children lived near a high school and because
many of them had jobs, only 27.3 percent of white Virginians age fifteen to twenty
had attended school. For African Americans the numbers were lower: 23.9 percent of
children ages five to nine, 57.2 percent ages ten to fourteen, and 18.4 percent
ages fifteen to twenty. Illiteracy had dropped from 40.6 percent of the population
older than ten in 1870 to 22.9 percent in 1900. Males and females suffered from
approximately equal rates of illiteracy (23.2 percent of males and 22.5 percent of
females), but rates were notably higher for African Americans, with 44.6 percent
of people older than ten classified as illiterate.

In spite of its inadequacies, the public schools had educated thousands of
Virginia's children and by the end of the nineteenth century appeared to many
people to be the best hope for the future of Virginia. Thirty-one years after the
first public schools opened, William Henry Ruffner proudly commented that "the
people are more sensitive in regard to any tendency toward weakening the school
system than on any other subject—more so than on suffrage or the race question in
any form."

Time Line

1831
- The General Assembly makes it a criminal offense to receive a salary for teaching enslaved people and prohibits assembling classes of free blacks for the purpose of teaching them.

1845
- The county of Norfolk establishes a public school system.

1850
- The city of Norfolk creates a public school system.

1862
- Virginia's first high school for African Americans, Beulah Normal and Theological School, opens in Alexandria.

March 3, 1865
- An act of Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau) within the War Department.

1868
- The city of Petersburg establishes a public school system.

1869
- The city of Richmond establishes a public school system.

July 6, 1869
- Voters ratify the new Virginia constitution that requires the General Assembly to create a statewide system of free public schools.

March 2, 1870
- The General Assembly elects William Henry Ruffner to serve as the superintendent of public instruction.

July 1870
- The General Assembly passes An Act to Establish and Maintain a Uniform System of Public Free Schools; the law requires racial segregation in the schools.

November 1870
- The first few state-mandated public schools in Virginia open.

August 1871
- By the end of this month more than 2,800 public schools have been established in Virginia, more than 700 of which are designated for African Americans. They enroll about 90,000 white students and 40,000 black students.

1877
- By this year Virginia has established 3,442 public schools enrolling nearly 140,000 white students and about 65,000 black students.

1878
- The General Assembly reelects William Henry Ruffner as superintendent of public instruction.

1879
- The General Assembly drastically slashes the public schools budget from more than $1,000,000 in 1877 to $570,000. About half of all public schools close.

1881
- About 162,000 white students and 77,000 black students are enrolled in Virginia public schools.

January 13, 1882
- The General Assembly elects R. R. Farr the state superintendent of public instruction.

1886
- About 197,000 white students and 111,000 black students are enrolled in Virginia public schools.

Tarter, Brent. A Saga of the New South: Race, Law, and Public
Debt in Virginia. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2016.

Cite This Entry

APA Citation:

Julienne, M. E., & Tarter, B. Establishment of the Public School System in Virginia. (2016, July 26). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Public_School_System_in_Virginia_Establishment_of_the.

MLA Citation:

Julienne, Marianne E. and Brent Tarter. "Establishment of the Public School System in Virginia." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities,
26 Jul. 2016. Web. READ_DATE.